I’ve read a lot of commentary on Olivier Busquet and Dan Colman’s t-shirts from the EPT Barcelona Super High Roller final table, and I was fortunate enough to discuss the issue at length with Olivier himself as well as with the always-thought-provoking Nate Meyvis on Episode 92 of our podcast.
Olivier conceded that he and Dan didn’t choose the best topic for breaking the ice, and I am sympathetic to the argument that they didn’t choose the best forum either, but I nonetheless respect the attempt and am deeply troubled by those who would assert that politics has no place in poker. These critics paint politics either as a matter of mere opinion to which everyone is entitled or, worse, a hobby or niche interest that people can reasonably choose to just not care about.
When politics is narrowly construed as liberal vs conservative, Obama vs Romney, then I can understand why many people see little point in engaging with it. But politics is much bigger than that: it’s about all sorts of decisions, made (or not made) by a variety of people in many different positions of authority, some far away but some as near as the brush stand. No one is an expert on all of these topics, and very few are experts on any of them, so there’s no sense in saying that only experts have the right to speak on them.
Professional Poker Players Are Not Rodeo Clowns
Robbie Strazynski claims that “Recreational poker players turn to poker for a break from everything else going on in the world. They also watch poker on television to see POKER, not politics.” Setting aside the impossibility of this warrantless assertion being true of all of the millions of recreational poker players in the world, Strazynski seems to believe that this is a good thing and that the role of the professional poker player is to provide this distraction.
That’s certainly not how I see myself, and Busquet also took issue with Strazynski’s assertion that, “Professional poker players play the game to make a living; not to make a statement, political or otherwise.”
Personally I’ve found studying poker to be extremely valuable to me in my decision-making and my general outlook on life away from the poker table. I’ve learned to think more clearly and rationally about certain things, had thousands of lessons in accepting with equanimity that which I cannot control, and become more familiar with mental biases to which all humans are prone.
I’m not delusional; I realize that people read this blog and listen to the podcast first and foremost for entertainment. Nonetheless, I hope that I present poker in a way that highlights the many positive habits of mind it can cultivate. And though I try not to go overboard about it, I don’t think I’ve been shy about overtly political posts. Sometimes they’ve dealt with policies directly related to poker and casinos, other times they’ve used poker as a frame for thinking about other political issues.
No Politics At the Table?
Many of Busquet and Colman’s critics invoke a supposed injunction against discussing politics at the table. Strazynski repeatedly emphasizes that he is all for political discussion on poker blogs, etc., and Victoria Coren claims that, “No politics or religion at the table” is “an old, old unwritten rule of poker.” That’s never been my experience, and even if that has been a tradition in some circles, it doesn’t follow that that’s how it should be.
Many people, myself included, would argue that television’s ability to serve as a mindless distraction is its worst and most insidious quality. I support televising poker, but I don’t support catering to the lowest common denominator in order to make poker programming more appealing to a particular subset of the viewing public.
One of the other arguments against political discussion at the table is that it can be a divisive, polarizing topic that undermines camaraderie. Then again the same could be said of sports, and that’s certainly a popular topic of conversation.
I agree that poker’s ability to get people of different ages, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and nationalities sitting together around a table is a remarkable thing. It seems a waste, though, to bring these people together and then insist that their conversations remain tepid and apolitical. Why should they not discuss weighty subjects on which they may disagree? Disagreement does not have to mean contentiousness, and besides poker tables often turn contentious for reasons that have nothing to do with politics.
Political “opinion” also isn’t (or shouldn’t be, anyway) an opinion in the same way that my favorite color is an opinion. Politics ought to be a debate, and people ought to actively investigate positions that they don’t fully understand but are not inclined to agree with. Being open to hearing out the opinions of others, and learning to express your own opinions in ways that make them appealing to people who don’t already agree with you, are important skills that are rapidly eroding in the age of the internet.
As Rob King says, “I am of the view that politics is a major part of everyday life. I was raised in a political household where politics were part of the daily discussion at the dinner table. I really can’t understand why people are afraid of talking about such politics more. It’s as though people are unaware that political decisions impact the average person’s life in a massive way.”
It’s certainly common for players to discuss poker-related politics, such as a change in rake structure, minimum or maximum buy-in, or other policies at the room where they are playing. They may also discuss policies at competing poker rooms, live vs online poker, or legislation likely to affect poker and gambling. Obviously the UIGEA and the Black Friday indictments were both common topics of discussion at brick & mortar poker rooms.
More to Come
I realize that I’ve stacked the deck here by drawing on examples that have a clear and direct relation to poker. In the second part of this post, though, I’m going to look at a few examples that bridge the gap between niche interest for poker players and broader political issues. These are topics that in my opinion ought to be discussed much more than they are in the poker world.
Their execution may have been imperfect at best, but rather than chastising Busquet and Colman for not doing their part to anesthetize television viewers, we ought to take the opportunity to discuss what is the proper relationship between poker and politics.
“No one is an expert on all of these topics, and very few are experts on any of them, so there’s no sense in saying that only experts have the right to speak on them.”
It goes farther: there is ample academic research that experts are no better at predictions than laymen. However, as “experts” they often get a microphone or platform. So it is imperative for good discussion and outcomes that non-experts be willing to speak up.
Politics ought to be a debate, and people ought to actively investigate positions that they don’t fully understand
The key word is ‘ought.’ Yes, I’m a cynic, but I’ve found people have their minds made up and talking about it doesn’t change anything.
Perhaps a wider view of the merits of discourse would appease your cynicism. Just as there are likely societal benefits to participating in democracy even if the outcome of the election is known, there are likely societal benefits to engaging in civil conversation even if the probability of converting anyone’s opinion is exactly zero. I might even venture that, in many cases, the societal benefits of voting and political discussion may very well outweigh the direct benefits of electoral choice and public opinion transformation.
“I’m not delusional; I realize that people read this blog and listen to the podcast first and foremost for entertainment. ”
But you are delusional; most people read posts like this to cultivate such wonderfully sober second thoughts.
Online poker is specific game with very fragile economics.
I often compare poker with MMOG-massively multiplayer online games.
Both types are capable of supporting large numbers of players.
Usually players pay real money to play .
*Unlike MMOG there are no large companies to sponsor poker.The injection of politics will not help to get sponsors.
*Poker in US does not have 25 mln player base.The people who pay real money on monthly basis-mainly subscription.You do not accomplish such impressive numbers by encouraging political statements such like “FREE GAZA”,etc.Even if you appreciate personal freedom and courage.
The injection of politics introduces more controversy and division.
Divisions means a smaller potential market.
My point that a poker industry interest is to cater to as wide an audience as possible.
This interest precludes it from supporting and encouraging political discourse.
Even if I accept everything you state, we are talking here about LIVE poker, not online. Obviously the two are related and connected, but the issue of political expression in online poker is almost moot. Pokerstars was acting to protect the live event, not their online brand, as there would be no way for these shirts to be known online.
In fact, I see online poker serving the role as the “politics free” form of poker, while live poker can be left to tinker with the “politics is allowed” form of poker. Those who want to avoid politics (and all the other distractions of live play) have online as their refuge.
Come on!.It was event channeled by media.You think that consumers made this distinction:
-Hey this is OK because this is LIVE poker event.
“Pokerstars was acting to protect the live event, not their online brand”- what?- COME ON!
PS was acting because they had to. If ADL will put label on them they will become Pokersh.. not PokerStars in US.
You win. I have no suitable counterpoint to “come on”.
Sorry I did not see how you could dissect the event from PS brand.
The video stream of EPT Barcelona had embeded PokerStars logo in the left cornet all the time.
PokerTable had big PS logo with PokerStars.net,etc.-clearly PS used EPT Barcelona to promote online PS brand.
Just stumbled across this post but feel compelled to contribute.
I play exclusively live, and strongly support the “no politics and no religion at the table” adage.
Consider the following hypothetical scenario: Many of us own stores at a small mall with a single entrance. I believe that child molestation should be permitted and encouraged in our society, and so I decide to debate and popularize my beliefs with the many people coming into the mall. How will you feel about this?
Of course, since my controversial behavior is jeopardizing your businesses, you’re going to be pretty pissed, and the ideas themselves are (hopefully) going to cause a lot of additional anger. But the stance of people on the issue is not nearly as important as one would think.
Instead, let’s now assume I’m trying to put a stop to prison rape. We’re in full agreement this time, but I imagine you’d still be strongly opposed to my campaigning in front of our mall; it costs you business. People come into your deli to buy a sandwich and a soda, and to relax. They’ve had a bad day at work, or with their wife, or with their 16 year-old daughter coming home drunk the night before, or with the million other problems in their lives, and they want to forget about it and take it easy. The last thing they want is to place themselves in an environment where people are talking about prison rape. They’re fully against it, as am I, as are all of us shop owners, but unanimity in recognizing it’s an injustice and should be dealt with is entirely irrelevant; the customer just doesn’t want to think about it.
Most people, as John noted, never want to think about these things, and will run away. They aren’t going to come to our stores. A small decline in the poker population may not seem like a big deal, but the types of people who are discouraged are the WORST poker players, the people contributing the most to the poker industry. If political controversy led the top pros to retire, hey, more power to ya.
I don’t support catering to the lowest common denominator in order to make poker programming more appealing to a particular subset of the viewing public.
But the subset of the viewing public which foucault correctly observes companies catering to isn’t disproportionately composed of pros, or even a random sample of the poker population; they’re people who either
(a) have little to no experience playing poker and are already intimidated by the thought playing, or
(b) are familiar with poker, perhaps playing regularly, but become very uncomfortable around conflict.
How would you classify these types of people as poker players if you had to guess?
There is a reason that businesses don’t seek out political controversy to confront their customers with, and to the contrary do everything they can to provide a safe, sheltered environment from it. Most customers don’t like it.
Ironically, the clearest application of the lessons of the tragedy of the commons referred to by Mobius Dumpling is to the presence of political discussion at the table, itself. Bringing controversial topics into the game lowers poker’s appeal to inexperienced and casual players, thereby weakening the poker economy.
I completely support political discussion. It is critical to informing the public, an ignored yet fundamental requirement for democracy, and I’m certain its increasing absence only strengthens corruption and the power of money over principle. But it’s the last thing I want a novice to associate with poker.
Since I’m fishing in the same pond as you, please do your best to avoid splashing the water.
I believe this pic will make much more sense and drama if they both chose t-shirts with statement “I AM GAY”
Ah, I was wondering if you were going to take issue with the conflation of “political speech” with “speech about national and international parties and governance”. You didn’t go as far as explaining that “The personal is political”, in the sense that basically everything were are subject to in everyday life is political, from the color of the chips and the way we signal a bet or a raise, through who gets to sit in what poker table, to what’s on TV and who has money to play in the first place: that’s the Derrida and Baudrillard (and, I assume, Focault) school. But except that, you covered basically everything wrong with the “no politics at the table” rhetoric.
Andrew, you say “These critics paint politics either as… a hobby or niche interest that people can reasonably choose to just not care about”, echoing Rob King, and Olivier made a similar point – if people diverted some of their attention from more trivial pursuits to politics, the world might be a better place.
I’d argue that, for most people, not caring about politics beyond the ways in which it immediately affects their lives is a fully moral and rational choice. If I spend hours mulling over my fantasy football team, I know the value of that is self-contained: it’s not going to affect who actually steps onto the field on Sunday. People who make the effort to be politically aware often act as though their knowledge will have an impact on the world. Realistically, this is almost never the case – if I spent every waking hour for the rest of my life campaigning for political change, I’d be very unlikely to affect anything beyond the local level (and even then, I’d likely have little to show for it). Poker is a great example – it doesn’t matter how many formidably smart people make the case for legalizing poker when there’s a well-bankrolled prejudice on the other side. Maybe there’s a personal value that political awareness has, but for most it seems to lead to anger and then misery, or pleasure from feeling superior to those on the wrong tribe. Nothing healthy, in either case.
This affects others as well, because it’s often channelled into a line of thought that legitimizes oppression with cheap lines like ‘if you don’t like it, vote them out’ or ‘if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain’. The danger of seeing political decisions as something we all contribute to is that it lets us take unjustified credit for things we approve of (leading to a sense that we’ve ‘done our part’ and a neglect of our actual moral duties towards others) and assign undue blame to others (including for decisions that hurt them but for which they have no recourse).
I used to be a political junkie, until I realized that it was making me miserable. I view politics now the way I view hurricane warnings – there’s not much I can do about it, and thinking about it isn’t going to add value to my life, so I’m aware of it to the extent I need to be and leave it there.
Dom, I think you’re flat-out wrong. And I think that you are being Americanocentric on top of that. Individuals do have a sizable influence both on public discourse and on politics, up to the national level and beyond.
The reason you may have come to believe that individuals have no influence over national politics is because it is very rare for a single person to be able to say “I am the person who changed the nation’s stance on topic X”. There aren’t many Rosa Parkses out there. However, the fact that few people can say that they have personally made a huge change does not mean that the actual expected change that an individual makes is small.
If we assume that there were as many as 100,000 black-rights activists in the struggle against racial segregation, then we can perform an approximate calculation by assigning each activist with about 1/100,000 of the credit for ending racial segregation: Rosa Parks had no way to know *she* was the one going to be Rosa Parks. So, how significant is it really to have 1/100,000 of the credit for ending racial segregation? Let’s be glib and estimate it in dollars: how much was ending racial segregation *worth* in dollars, from 1960 until today? A back-of-the-envelope calculation gave me a figure of more than three trillion dollars (3,000,000,000,000$). By this calculation, each of those 100,000 activists made a change in the magnitude of thirty million dollars. You have to scale it down because of several reasons: segregation would have ended anyway sonner or later even if these activists wouldn’t have worked so hard to achieve it, and these 100,000 activists weren’t the only ones who get the credit for ending segregation. So we might cut this down by a factor of 10 or more. But still, you can see that individuals’ acts do make a huge difference. The math on voting is similar: each person’s vote is very small and weak, but its effects extend to everyone in their country, so in total their vote made a huge effect on society.
You can make a similar calculation for the Gay rights movement, for women’s equality in sports, and for countless other social struggles.
So what *were* you thinking about when you claimed that individuals have little influence on politics? One probable thing that led to your conclusions is cognitive biases: to estimate the effect of an individual on the political landscape, you have to divide a huge number (the benefit of the change) by another huge number (the number of activists). You have to further divide it if you are doing less than an average activist for a cause. When we divide a huge number by a huge number, it is often very tempting to round down to zero. It is especially tempting to round down to zero when the result is probabilistic: because the political change is not guaranteed to actually happen, and because unless you are someone like Rosa Parks, you don’t know if you individually made a change. It’s similar to the math we make when calculating our EV in big-field tournaments: your EV in every given tournament could be very substantial, and still your actual earnings might be negative for a long time, while you’re waiting for your big win. In this comparison, the winner of a 2,000 person tournament is the parallel of Rosa Parks: it’s the one person who got lucky enough to be able to take credit for the change, but everyone else had positive EV that did not happen to manifest into dollars.
But you were probably thinking of another issue when you claimed that individuals make little difference: in the U.S. it is very hard to make changes regarding various kinds of issues. Guantanamo Bay is a good example, or stopping corn subsidies or fining polluting factories. These issues are where American democracy is particularly weak, because they involve money. In many aspects the U.S. behaves more like an Plutocracy with a Democratic flavor, than as an actual Democracy, so it is very hard to make a change in issues where the rich have a strong stake. Social changes like Gay rights don’t cost anyone money, so they are more possible to make. The reasons for this weakness of American democracy are varied; among them are the broken first-past-the-post voting system, as well as campaign-funding issues, and the fact that capitalism seems to be a national religion. This is why I said that you are being Americanocentric: other countries do not suffer from these difficulties, and it is much easier to make far-reaching economic or national-security changes in western-European countries than it is in the U.S.
I’ve lived in the UK all my life, so that should answer the first bit. The idea that these problems are unique to America is far more Americo-centric than anything else: as a resident of a supposedly more enlightened Western European democracy, I’ve seen nothing to justify that claim, which was presented without evidence. The points I made apply just as much in Finland or Sweden as they do in the States.
I have no idea what to make of that argument. In a poker tournament, it’s easy to imagine how someone might realize their equity – you make decisions within the game, each of which have an estimable EV, and those break a certain way. By contrast, even if we grant that the impact of desegregation is quantifiable in that way, that the figure is that high, and that you can evenly divide the equity (which is absurd), it doesn’t follow that any one individual can reasonably expect to realize that equity. Rosa Parks the woman couldn’t have expected to become Rosa Parks the civil rights icon, but that’s not a reason to chase the wind in the hope of being the next Rosa Parks; it’s an reason to direct your energy towards actions with an expected, tangible benefit. Most people who pride themselves on being politically engaged could do far more good volunteering at a shelter or giving money/clothes/etc. to a reputable charity than flaunting their debating talent on Facebook. To use a recent example, the relevant part of the viral ALS challenge isn’t the videos or ‘raising awareness’, it’s the substantial increase in donations that ALS foundations have reported.
The fact that these undefined individual contributions sum to something influential offers no incentive for someone to become politically involved – I can stay at home on polling day and pay only cursory attention to the news in the knowledge that my doing so makes no difference to anyone else. It also offers no comfort or hope for redress to victims of political oppression – politicians pass laws directly controlling almost every aspect of our lives, and my only way to register a meaningful complaint is to cast a statistically meaningless, all-encompassing vote for a candidate every few years (if somebody proposed a similar model for corporate accountability, they would be laughed out of the building). Again, exaggerating your own ability to affect that process only leads to complacency and victim-blaming.
Dom, I believe that you didn’t understand my point. The point I was making is that one indeed *cannot* hope to realize their equity is social struggles, because the actual outcomes are top-heavy. So most of the participants indeed individually accomplish very little. The *average* effect across all activists is high, even if most of them have very small effect. And it is hard to predict in advance which of the activists will have the large effect, since it’s so noisy and random.
An individual shouldn’t hope to be the next Rosa Parks: indeed, if an individual is politically active with the sole hope of being the next Rosa Parks, they should go do something else with their time. And yet, their activism actually has very high benefits for society, in average, so if all their hope is to have an impact: they should be happy that they, indeed, have such an impact, at least on average.
You give the example of the ALS campaign. I don’t like that campaign but, if what you say about it is true, it supports my point of view rather than yours: the online activism has managed to spread and have a big financial benefit for the cause: at least according to what you say about it, people did have an impact because this cause has spread and succeeded.
Facebook activism is a particularly lowly form of activism. One should be realistic about its effect (or lack thereof). But that’s not an argument against political activism, it’s just an argument against facebook activism. (Or, indeed, an argument against facebook in general.)
I’m pretty sure I disproved your claim that “I can stay at home on polling day and pay only cursory attention to the news in the knowledge that my doing so makes no difference to anyone else”. If you do the math, then it turns out that your vote does have an influence on average. Not on any one particular individual: your effect on any one particular individual is miniscule. But your expected effect over all of society in total is huge. If the effect of my vote on each of the 80 million people in the UK can be estimated at 0.01 cent, then the total effect of my vote is 8000$: clearly worth going to the polling station. This, by the way is the problem with the so-called “Voting Paradox”: it looks at my effect on my own well-being, rather at my effect on society at large. Seen this way, the “Voting Paradox” is actually just an instance of the Tragedy Of The Commons.
If it makes you unhappy to partake in politics, then by all means, don’t partake in politics. But telling other people that are interested in politics that they should not do so because they have no effect is just bad advice: it’s factually wrong. They will have a tiny influence on the well-being of each individual for which they are working, which sums up to quite a big influence.
Finally, I stand corrected on the American point. Keeping that in mind, I think I still wasn’t that far off the mark: I purposefully avoided giving the UK as an example of a country where far-reaching changes can be made, because it shares many of the problems of the US: most notably an even worse first-past-the-post problem, which does not exist in most other European countries. I my experience, people tend to speak differently in countries where their vote does actually have an effect, even if that effect is admittedly statistical.
Very interesting stuff, thanks for these long and thought-provoking posts. FWIW I feel similarly about the bus boycott being a good example to prove this point, but for different reasons. Rosa Parks did actually know, more or less, that she was signing up to be the symbolic figurehead of this movement and what that meant. She was carefully chosen as a sympathetic figure, and the NAACP etc chose not to press the case on behalf of several other individuals who were similarly charged with crimes for sitting in the white section of a bus.
But when you grasp the logistics of what went into that bus boycott, individual actions truly were important. Tens of thousands of people needed to get from black neighborhoods, which of course were in the least desirable and most inconvenient locations, to their places of business down, in factories, or in white neighborhoods in the case of women who worked as domestic servants. Many did not own cars.
A tremendous amount of coordination and cooperation was required to arrange carpools and informal taxi services, to spread the word about the boycott, to counteract false information (detractors tried to spread rumors that the boycott was over and poeple should return to riding the bus), etc. Parks, King, etc certainly played disproportionately large roles, but the more I learned about the boycott, the more I realized what a grassroots effort it truly required.
Of course not everything works that way and plenty of people waste their time on stuff where they really won’t make much difference. It doesn’t follow that nothing makes a difference, and again especially if there are issues that are of special interest to poker players, talking about them at the table may be one way of figuring out the most efficacious course of action.
I also think there are plenty of small political actions worth taking even if they don’t contribute to any large scale change. For instance, I don’t eat meat not because I think I’m doing my part to collapse the meat industry but just because I don’t personally want to partake in what I consider an unethical industry. Likewise I sometimes wonder about playing poker at certain venues vs others. Atlantis in particular is one about which I have a lot of qualms. I realize I am less than a speck on their radar, so it’s just a personal ethical choice about what I want to be a part of.
But a different sort of example: over the summer I sat in a game with a player who recognized me from my Card Player articles and seemed excited to meet me and eager to talk to me about poker strategy. He later made a crude joke to a female player at the table (he was more oblivious than mean or harassing, in my estimation), and when she didn’t seem to hear it, he started trying to get her attention to repeat it. I caught his eye, shook my head, and said “Inappropriate.” He got a little defensive and things were a bit tense between us after that, but he left her alone. I don’t think I struck a significant blow for women’s equality, but I may, without her realizing it, have made one person’s day slightly more pleasant, and hopefully changed the behavior of another individual going forward.
There’s really no way to be nonpolitical in that situation. You could say that chastising him was bringing up “my” politics at the table, but ignoring his behavior would be tacitly endorsing the dominant, in my opinion problematic, norm, which is also a sort of political statement.
I come from the days of Tommie Smith and John Carlos who at the 1968 Summer Olympics raised their black gloved fists to protest against racism and segregation in the US and to encourage Black Power. Then they came under strong criticism and suffered punishment by the Olympic Committee. Then it was the movement of the masses to end racism, sexism, and promote Peace. And by Any Means Necessary.
Where is the correct place to voice an opinion and fight for a cause you passionately believe in. Had Carlos and Smith had not done what they did perhaps would not have motivated me and many other young people at the time to look into their souls. I say all power to those who are willing to take chances to make change in this world.
As for politics I am not without hope. Many of us made changes in this world. To better the life of those who come after us. We had the draft in 68 and I saw many of my mates die in the battlefield in a far away country who did not know why. Segregation was still alive and many were not allowed into the gambling casinos that are free of that. I think Busquet and Colman may not have thought this out clearly but followed their hearts. I support them.
Looking ahead, I believe that what will result from this is a ban on all printed messages on apparel worn by poker players on televised events…. except of course for paid sponsors patches and the like.
Robbie Strazynski asked me to post the following comment on his behalf:
Thanks to Andrew for writing about this important subject. With specific regard to responding to what Olivier Busquet said on your podcast ep. 92, I was a guest on the Mark Hoke Show yesterday and had the opportunity to speak in response. Humbly, I think all Thinking Poker readers and listeners who have taken an interest in the debate, whether you agree or disagree with me, will benefit from listening to the podcast of yesterday’s show, which has just become available.
http://markhokeshow.podbean.com/e/mark-hoke-show-on-klav-48-82714-robbie-strazynski/
Best regards to all,
Robbie
I forced myself to listen to the entire Strazynski interview on the Mark Hoke Show, and I have to say it’s pretty weak stuff. I particularly loved the part where he explains that we can know for sure that Israel is just defending itself because its military is called the IDF: the Israeli *Defense* Forces.
I was also struck by how much everyone there takes it as a given that any opinion against Israel is first wrong, and second must come either from ignorance or malice. Sorry Strazynski, I know much more than you about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I can tell you for a fact that Israel is indeed conducting state terror. I can bring relevant quotes of actual Israeli military officials that pretty much explain that this is their strategy. Ever hear of Israeli officials explaining that we are bombing Gaza to “Collect a Price”, to “Preserve Deterrence”, or to “Sear the Palestinians’ Minds”? They are talking about state terrorism, but they are being polite about it: when you use a different terminology, all of a sudden you’re allowed to do weird stuff. It’s the “Collateral Damage” debacle all over again.
Now, I’m not even insisting that Israel is in the wrong. (I mean, I believe that both Israel and Hamas are in the wrong, but that’s besides the point.) One doesn’t have to be anti-Israeli to listen to your interview and realize that you are making very weak arguments that will convince only the ignorant and feeble-minded.
Bravo, Andrew. Good stuff here.
I think the political dialogue has gotten so vociferous and polarized that average people simply run away from it.
Do you have a blog möbius d? Some top posts right there.
Poker is a game of incomplete information, just as understanding Dan Coleman’s motivations both at the EPT and One Drop. To characterise him or Olivier Busquet as Anti-Semites or Anti-Zionist seems to me to be a epic misread.
First, he was severely criticised in the poker media for not using his One Drop win as a forum to articulate his beliefs publicly on camera/in interviews.
His reluctance (from what I have heard & read) seems to be down to his lack of confidence in his ability to articulate the force and depth of his beliefs cogently on camera. This cannot be a surprise for a man who has spent 40% of his life playing hyper heads up sit & go’s. Even though when he did speak about the One Drops charitable activity on ESPN he seemed more passionate & believable about it than most the other pro’s combined.
Then a month or so later, in the second situation, he is criticised for then using the soapbox given too him for conveying publicly his beliefs. In a complete logic fail by both the twitterverse & PS is that this is not (in my view) a provocative political statement. Either pro Hamas or Anti Israel. It is his way of trying to draw attention the fact that civilians, normal people are being killed.
Back to the poker analogy, my “read” on the situation is you have a young guy who understands how damaging gambling can be to people’s lives & understands (all be it in remote and disconnected way) the crushing & prolonged suffering of the PEOPLE of Gaza. A place where the metric of assessing property value is how likely it is to be shelled by Israeli artillery. In this place where you always have a <2% hand. Given the over 50 to 1 death rate on the Palestinian side.
The only thing he is guilty of is a well developed sense of empathy for suffering. And, that in my book is to be applauded.
P.S. If you would like get a broader viewpoint on the situation over there I highly recommend the documentary Five Broken Cameras.
Given the existence of the Big One for One Drop, the poker world has forfeited the right to claim it is apolitical or that players should not have or express political opinions. Water is by far an extremely political topic in itself. The debate between finding solutions to problems via charity or government responsibility is a top 5 in the US. The responsibility of corporate beneficiaries to use their wealth to benefit society is also top 5. Then there is the cross topic of whether this should be through taxes or charitable giving. The whole tournament is a big, multi-layered political statement. And that’s before getting into the number of players who are backed in the tournament.
+1.
I’m amazed how little discussion there has been around the selection of the charity for One Drop, and it’s founder.